Asking questions

How to ask

The chat interface lives at the root of the app (app.answervault.ai/). Type a question in plain English in the input at the bottom of the screen and press enter.

AnswerVault retrieves the most relevant chunks from your indexed documents, passes them to a managed AI model in your residency region, and returns an answer grounded in the source material. The agent has no tool-calling agency — it cannot run actions, access systems, or take steps on your behalf. It returns text.

Patterns that work

Be specific

Specific questions get specific answers. Vague ones get vague ones, because vague retrieval pulls vague context.

• "What's our data retention policy for client records?" works better than "Tell me about policies"
• "How do I submit an expense claim over £500?" works better than "expense process"
• "What were the key risks raised in the Q3 board report?" works better than "summarise the board report"

Use the words your documents use

AnswerVault does semantic search, so synonyms work. But if your documents use a specific term — a product name, a policy number, a project codename — using that term in the question usually pulls better context.

Ask follow-ups

The chat is conversational. If the first answer isn't quite what you needed, ask a clarifier:

• "Where is that policy documented?"
• "Is there a more recent version?"
• "Who owns that process?"

Pick the surface that fits the moment

Same knowledge base, different surfaces:

• Web app. The deepest experience — full history, follow-ups, multi-document synthesis.
• CLI. Fast one-shot answers piped into scripts. See CLI.
• Teams / Slack. In-context answers in the channels where work is already happening. See Teams and Slack.
• REST API. For custom integrations and embedding into your own products.

Examples

Policy and process

• "What's our data retention policy?"
• "How do I submit an expense claim?"
• "What's the process for onboarding a new supplier?"
• "What's the escalation path for a data breach?"

Technical knowledge

• "How do I configure the VPN?"
• "What's the architecture of the payments service?"
• "Where's the API documentation for the billing module?"

Business information

• "Summarise the Q3 board report."
• "What were the key findings from the customer survey?"
• "Who's the account lead for Acme Corp?"

People and ownership

• "Who should I speak to about GDPR compliance?"
• "Who wrote the infrastructure migration plan?"
• "Who owns the partner programme?"

When there's no answer

AnswerVault is retrieval-augmented, not generative. If the answer isn't in the documents you've connected, it will say so rather than make something up.

If you're not getting the answer you expect, the usual causes are:

• The source isn't connected. Check the Connectors page in the app — is the relevant SharePoint site, Drive folder, or Confluence space in scope?
• The sync isn't complete. Check the Syncs page. A long-running first sync might not have reached the relevant document yet.
• The document doesn't exist. AnswerVault can't tell you what isn't written down. If the policy is undocumented, the answer is genuinely missing.
• The phrasing is too vague. Try a more specific question, or one that uses the document's own vocabulary.

For the conceptual model behind retrieval and generation, see How it works and Architecture.